Social media have been with us for over twelve years, but there are no official rules on how to use them without falling flat on our faces.
Oversharing and ending relationships by text are the norm. Really?
Many of us are introduced to the digital social sphere by friends or children who use it carelessly. We take their bad habits with us and ofthen make them worse.
Yet
prefers proper letters, written by hand with stamps rather than badly composed Facebook posts.
prefers meeting the love of your life by chance, in a bar, at a friends’ house or during a summer festival to selecting people according to overambitious criteria on Meetic.
The person who said technology will replace paper has never tried to wipe their arse with a smartphone.
But for most of us, pen and paper belong to the distant past; so behold, gives you a list of 15 basic social media behaviour commandments.
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1. Don’t ‘overshare’ on Facebook, it saturates email boxes of your digital “friends”
2. Don’t try to flirt using LinkedIn, Viadeo or any other business platform
3. Don’t check the phone of your loved one to see if any sexting is going on
4. Don’t post your emotionally charged day events on social media
5. When gossiping about your “friends” don’t hit “reply all”
6. Do not converse on social media when you’re angry
7. Do not post photos or messages when you’re drunk
8. If you’re stuck in traffic, warn that you’re going to be late
9. If you feel too ill to go to work, phone your superior, do not text
10. Call your real friends on their birthdays; sending a text or posting on Facebook isn’t enough
11. Do not text your boyfriend/girlfriend to say that it’s over
12. If you need to share bad news, always call
13. When emailing work, end it with “best” and not “love” or “kisses”
14. Be polite; use please and thank you as you would otherwise
15. Spell correctly, you will shine
A social media addict spends four hours and 12 minutes online every day and averages 180 “friends”
Social media fans send 31 texts, 13 Facebook messages or comments, six tweets and 11 emails every day.
We start exchanging at 9.29pm. Wow! What did our parents do to pass the time?
People are increasingly moving away from the traditional ways of staying in touch, and so the psychology of friendship in the digital age has changed.
Not for everyone, we hope.